Singapore Med J 2014; 55(1): 3-4; http://dx.doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2014002
Otto Loewi (1873-1961): Dreamer and Nobel laureate
McCoy AN, Tan SY
Correspondence: Prof Tan Siang Yong, siang@hawaii.edu
SUMMARY
Ironically, Otto Loewi is better known for the way in which he came upon the idea that won him the Nobel Prize than for the discovery itself. Loewi’s prize-winning experiment came to him in a dream. According to Loewi, “The night before Easter Sunday of [1920] I awoke, turned on the light and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of thin paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6.00 o’clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at 3.00 o’clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a simple experiment on a frog heart according to the nocturnal design.”
Singapore Med J 2014; 55(1): 3-4; http://dx.doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2014002
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